AJE Feature | Happiness Oriented Parents: An alternative perspective on privilege and choosing schools by Mira Debs, Judith Kafka, Molly Vollman Makris, & Allison Roda

The full-length American Journal of Education article by Debs et al. can be accessed here

In our increasingly diverse but segregated society, how and why urban school parents choose schools has been a popular topic in the media and scholarly literature. Most of this work, including some of our own, assumes that privileged parents always tend to act as “opportunity hoarders” by seeking out the most desirable or academically competitive schools in ways that sustain segregation and exclude other families. In other words, privileged parents, defined here as those with the economic, social, and educational resources to navigate school choice processes to their advantage, are seen as the problem, not the solution in achieving greater school integration.

Yet as we conducted research with parents in urban school settings, we started to observe an emerging pattern of parents who were not following this trend of choosing schools to maintain educational advantage. Instead, these parents repeatedly spoke of their priority being their children’s immediate happiness, whether that looked like going to a school close by, having an emphasis on a strong socio-emotional program or even a less competitive academic environment. We decided to pool our interview data across seven separate studies of school integration and school choice in New York City, Hartford, CT and a small East Coast city from 2012-2021 to make a qualitative meta-analysis.

In our recently published article in the American Journal of Education, Happiness Oriented Parents: An alternative perspective on privilege and choosing schools, we identify a subset of 106 privileged parents in our collective studies who seek schools that prioritize their child’s social-emotional happiness instead of social mobility and/or academic rigor. We call this group happiness-oriented parents, and argue that understanding such parents’ school choices could aid policy efforts to interrupt opportunity hoarding and promote school desegregation and equity.

We found a happiness orientation in a diverse group of privileged parents (forty percent identified as Black, Latinx, Asian, or multiracial and the remaining sixty percent were white). Although these parents were choosing a range of school options in different contexts, and they identified different criteria as important to cultivating happiness in their children, they consistently 1) centered their children’s happiness in selecting schools, 2) chose for social emotional and non-competitive academic factors, and 3) often chose racially and socio-economically diverse settings, either as a deliberate strategy or as a by-product of their choices. We recognize that the privileged parents across our samples are in a position to prioritize their children’s day-to-day social-emotional happiness in selecting schools, a choice that is its own type of advantage; yet the choices these parents make can set them apart from other privileged parents in meaningful ways.

First, while happiness-oriented parents in our studies all cared about school quality, they defined the purpose of schools in ways that equated “happiness” with social emotional well-being. For example, Hillary, a white Brooklyn mother, explained that she avoided settings that she thought would be “too academic” in ranking middle school options for her daughter because she worried about her daughter’s stress level. “I mean, she’s smart, but I just feel like freaking out and stressing out about school is, I don’t know, the last of my concerns right now. Being happy and healthy is better.”

Second, happiness-oriented parents have a more expanded view of what a “good school” might look like. Beyond specific pedagogies or school themes, happiness-oriented parents described seeking schools with a range of non-competitive academic characteristics, including providing a “well-balanced experience,” a “diverse school with different types of learners,” “really good teachers,” “social justice teaching,” a “beautiful/nurturing environment,” an “organic, environmentally sustainable food service,” “gardening,” or “a commitment to supporting the whole child.” Saira, an immigrant from Africa, described the ideal Brooklyn middle school for her multiracial daughter as “small, and intimate, and a school where things are flexible, and fluid, not a very highly competitive environment. . . . She identifies as an athlete, but she also loves to be outdoors, loves hands-on kind of learning.” For Tara, a Black mother in Hartford, finding a program that was easy to get into and not a competitive magnet was a draw, “We actually really loved the fact that we could just go there and that it wasn’t a magnet school. It was just a good school.”

Third, happiness-oriented parents often sought out racially diverse school settings. Parents of color explained their choice of diverse schools as affirming their children’s identity alongside exposing them to a broad spectrum of children. Tiffany, a Black mother from a small East Coast city wanted a school with diversity, explaining that “there’s a lot of value in having a diversified classroom.” For some white happiness-oriented parents, the rejection of academic prestige was closely linked to their willingness to consider racially diverse schools and avoid predominantly white settings. Cristina, a white mom from Queens explained, “I have the perspective of having no diversity growing up … and my husband as well. And these kids it’s just being ingrained in their psyche that it’s a diverse society… I think that is an amazing way to grow up. That they are just accepting of everything.” We recognize this support for integration is limited by the fact that most happiness-oriented parents’ primary motivation remains individualistic rather than collective and privileged parents are still likely to resist hyper-segregated schools and to use their choice privilege if their children are unhappy.

While we were initially hesitant to write yet another article about privileged parents we felt that identifying a racially diverse subcategory whose choice priorities differed from the often dominant representation could have important policy implications. Understanding that some privileged parents are less focused on academic programming could guide leaders and policy makers at a variety of types of public schools to expand non-competitive academic offerings in programming, extracurriculars, aftercare, and highlight such offerings in school outreach and advertising. Importantly, our findings indicate potential for broader support for controlled choice policies that use parents’ varied school preferences to deliberately create more diverse and integrated educational settings.